By Peter C. Gøtzsche at Brownstone dot org.

The Cochrane Collaboration is a grassroots organisation founded in 1993. It publishes systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and was highly successful until British journalist Mark Wilson became CEO in 2012. A major medical journal expressed concern that someone with no health care experience was leading one of the foremost organisations dedicated to ensuring good clinical decisions. Wilson made the organisation highly ineffective and bureaucratic, and his actions harmed Cochrane's mission about ensuring high scientific standards.

The problems mounted, and in April 2021, Wilson suddenly left his job, a week before Cochrane's largest funder, the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) in the UK, announced a major budget cut. The funder criticised the poor scientific quality of Cochrane reviews, "a point raised by people in the Collaboration to ensure that garbage does not go into the reviews; otherwise, your reviews will be garbage." Only four months later, the NIHR declared that the funding would stop in March 2023. When that happened, Cochrane was in big disarray, but the huge bureaucracy and the poor scientific standard continued nonetheless.

Wilson left abruptly "after eight years of outstanding service," as Cochrane leaders called his destruction of the organisation. Cochrane's Editor-in-Chief, Karla Soares-Weiser, became acting CEO for a month until MBA Judith Brodie took over as interim CEO for a year.

In July 2022, Catherine Spencer became CEO. The "full bio" on Cochrane's homepage does not reveal her education, and I couldn't find that out, as there are, for example, a historian and a rugby player with the same name.

When Spencer left in March 2025, Soares-Weiser became acting CEO. Six months later, she became the CEO, and the chair of the Cochrane Governing Board, Susan Phillips, said that she "has the vision, experience and passion to lead Cochrane to a bright new future."

I shall give my reasons why I don't think the Cochrane Titanic with Soares-Weiser as captain has a "bright new future" but is more likely to sink, which some people predicted would happen when I, one of the founding fathers, was expelled in 2018 because I had become a threat to Wilson's firm grip on power. I had been elected to the Governing Board because I wanted to save Cochrane from him.

I shall discuss 11 cases that stem from my personal experiences and those of Tom Jefferson, one of my previous employees, starting in 2015 when Soares-Weiser became Deputy Editor-in-Chief and got a substantial say about the standard of Cochrane reviews (she became Editor-in-Chief in 2019). But first, I shall describe a stunning affair in 2013.

2013, Cochrane Review of Influenza Vaccines

After Tom Jefferson had not found any effect of influenza vaccines on mortality in elderly people, a group of researchers "rearranged" the data "after invitation from Cochrane" and reported that the vaccines reduced deaths – an amazing statistical stunt considering that the risk ratio was 1.02 and only four people died. This misconduct foreboded later events.

2015, Cochrane Review of Chlorpromazine for Schizophrenia

I submitted a comment to the Cochrane Library about this review. The authors included Soares-Weiser who is a psychiatrist. They mentioned in the abstract, without any reservation, that akathisia didn't occur more often on drug than on placebo, and that the largest trial even found significantly less akathisia in the active group than in the placebo group. I noted that, "Since we know that antipsychotics cause akathisia and that placebo cannot cause akathisia, this result speaks volumes about how flawed trials in schizophrenia generally are. What was seen in the placebo group were cold turkey symptoms caused by withdrawal of the antipsychotics the patients had received before randomisation."

Cochrane replied that akathisia symptoms "are well recognised to also occur in people who have never been on medication....